Richard Wright

Pioneer of far away intimate spaces Richard Wright is gone.

Music of afternoons. The wide open streets of children smaller than I am now. The sound of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” oozing loud through hi fi speakers from an open window at the top of my uncle's next door neighbor's house in Norwich, UK. High summer. The synthesizers and found sounds grinding like a cosmic hurdy gurdy.

Childhood memories of playing in eternal sunday afternoon. Wet Richmond afternoons with Syd.

The unspeakable beauty of “The Great Gig in the Sky.”

That penultimate chord of the opening riff of “Breathe.”

“Us and Them,” with the unexpected shocker “Black—and blue / And who knows which is which, and who is who.”

The first ambient music. Strange, so strange, keyboard solos in “Welcome to the Machine” and “Dogs” (and the light but intense work on side 1 of The Wall) will haunt me until my grave. Penetrating, ghostly, shuddering. Coming from far future and far past, far inside the body, far outside. Simultaneously.

The suburban London melancholy of haunted railway lines arcing away into the trees, the green lights looking at us as we stood on top of the bridge.

Richard Wright's music was always already the sound of grief.